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Calix barely remembered the next four hours. Couldn’t count how many times Titus stuffed him with his cock. How many times Cal came. Or if he’d passed out once or twice.

There were bits of recollection, like how he’d been wrapped tightly in the director's arms when they’d finally left the room. And how he’d frowned at Aodhan, who’d disappeared earlier and gone to join the fray outside.

The doctor had been the only thing left living in that entire space, sitting in the center of the room, surrounded by gored bodies as though he were the king of hell.

He’d been in the process of arranging organs when Titus had called him, and even though it’d seemed like he was immersed in what he’d been doing, the second he heard the older man, he’d dropped the stomach in his hand and walked over to them, crushing the very things he’d been playing with carelessly beneath his boots.

That might have been when Calix threw up.

Maybe not though.

There was a good chance he’d thrown up earlier, and not because of the bloodshed, but because of how exhausted he was from taking Titus’s cock.

If this were him three months ago, he’d say it was because Aodhan stepped on someone's entrails, and Cal had seen guts explode out the torn end. But now lying, even to himself, to make himself feel better, was too cumbersome a task.

He thought they might have gone somewhere after that, but when he heard them calling his name next, he was confused to see they were just in another part of the warehouse.

“Open your eyes, baby,” Titus urged gently. “Aodhan has a gift for you.”

Cal was almost one hundred percent certain he did not want it, but he fought against exhaustion and made himself blink his eyes open anyway.

Only for confusion to grow.

At first, he didn’t know what he was looking at.

It took far too long for his brain to process what he was seeing.

The room they were standing in must have been a storage room in the back.

It was small. There was nothing in there but some cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling and a single square table that was slightly off kilter.

That, and the severed head sitting on the table’s center.

With some poor bastards torn dick shoved in the head’s mouth.

Oh. There was also a pile of parts on the other side of the room.

“She brought her lover with her,” Aodhan began, though he sounded far away. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t one of the orphans. I checked. She doesn’t sleep with them anymore, not since you were arrested.”

Calix brushed Titus’s hands off his shoulders but didn’t speak or make any other moves to distance himself from the towering presence at his back.

“She does still beat them though. Well,” Aodhan snickered, “she did. She won’t be doing that now either.” He clapped, and when Calix turned his head toward the sound, he saw Aodhan had made it with hands that didn’t belong to him.

The doctor was holding two perfectly severed limbs, cut at the forearm. Once he noticed Cal was watching, he grinned and tossed them to the left, into a pile of other parts that had been cut and dissected and left in a careless heap.

“I can’t take credit for the dick though,” Aodhan told him. “She’d already ripped that off the guy by the time I arrived, but I thought it made a good garnish, don’t you agree?”

“You’re enjoying this too much,” Titus drawled, though there was humor in his voice.

“Not really,” he disagreed. “I didn’t get to hurt her nearly as much as I wanted. Not nearly as much as she deserved for what she did to Calix.”

“How long have you known?” Cal sounded different to his own ears, numb.

“Since the beginning,” Titus said.

“The beginning eight years ago,” he swallowed the lump in his throat, “or the beginning four months ago?”

“I found out after the trial. I looked into you after you disappeared.”

“Oh.” So always. He’d always known exactly what Calix had gone through as a teen.

“She used to beat you, touch you until you were hard, then call you disgusting while she forced your dick inside her cunt,” Aodhan growled.

“She died after an hour and thirty-seven minutes. I should have made it longer. I lost control when she realized why I was doing it, and she started to make excuses.”

“She waited until I was eighteen,” Calix said. “The sex. She waited until I was legal.”

“Yeah,” Aodhan sneered, “excuses just like that.”

“I don’t like being forcibly fucked because of her,” Cal stated, voice shaking slightly. “That isn’t the reason. I’m messed up but…Not like that. I hated what she did to me. Every time she did it, I felt like dying. She never made me like it, even if she could manipulate my body and make me—”

“Shh.” Titus wrapped his arms around his chest and pulled him tightly against himself. “You don’t have to explain. We already know. We aren’t judging you.”

“I can get off without the pain,” he rushed to continue anyway. “I don’t need to be held down and made to take it. I was interested in that sort of sex before she ever started touching me. Hell. The only reason she even started was because I got hard after she’d hit me and—”

“Whoa.” Aodhan stepped closer, momentarily blocking his view of the severed head. “We aren’t going to do that, Be’urn. We aren’t going to stand here and let you lie about something this serious.”

“I’m not—”

“Yes,” he insisted, “you are, because in no universe was anything that happened to you at that orphanage your fault. So you popped a boner? Big fucking deal. You were a horny teenager just discovering what you liked and didn’t like in the bedroom.

She took advantage of that. She was an adult, and she chose to abuse her power and take advantage of that. Of you.”

A part of Cal had always hated himself for losing control in front of her that first time. Of giving her that opening. But…

Aodhan would tell him if he’d been the reason. The doctor never pulled punches, and Titus…Titus called him little monster. Titus knew about him, about everything.

“It’s…not my fault?” he asked, softly. Pathetically. “Not even a little? I—”

“Not even a little,” Aodhan stated vehemently.

“And while we’re on the subject, it’s not your fault for what happened to that kid either.

Well—” he blew out a breath, “it’s your fault for hitting him with your car, but the asshole deserved it.

I’m still furious he found a way to reverse the damage.

He hasn’t suffered nearly long enough either. ”

“When did Nero find out about you and Sister Grace?” Titus gently asked.

Calix licked his dry lips. “Locker room. He saw the marks she’d left, assumed she’d beaten me.

She had, but he made a joke about it being more than that when he noticed the rope burns on my wrists.

Said it must have been rough play in the bedroom gone wrong.

Something about my reaction must have given me away, because he realized he’d hit the nail on the head.

The next day, he was sharing photos of me he’d taken without my knowledge to the rest of the class.

Telling them how I fucked my caretaker to soothe my mommy issues. ”

Something had snapped in Cal that day. Before then, he’d liked pain, sure, but not delivering it. He’d sobbed like a baby after those two older kids had murdered the sylar in the woods. Cried himself to sleep, thinking about how Sister Grace had so carelessly tossed the body like it was nothing.

Calix had never wanted to harm anyone.

Until he did.

Until Nero Quinten was walking in front of his car, laughing on the phone, probably telling whoever was on the other end all about how Calix let Sister Grace ride his dick.

Let.

As if he’d let any of it happen.

As if he’d ever wanted it.

“He told the entire school I was a filthy pervert and then pretended like I didn’t exist. Like he was too good for me.” Calix shook his head. “He was never too good for me.”

“You’re too good for him, Azi.” Titus pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek. “Far too good. He should never have been allowed to breathe the same air as you, let alone get close enough to take photos of your bare skin.”

There was a knock on the door, and when Calix jumped at the sudden intrusion, Titus held him closer.

“Relax, it’s just Nyxian,” Aodhan explained, moving to walk around them to answer.

“Who?” Calix asked, but the second the doctor was no longer blocking his view of the table, he stopped caring about the answer.

“I have your creature. Would you like me to load it into your car now? I have places to be,” a new voice said to Aodhan as soon as the door was opened.

“Would you like a moment alone with her?” Titus whispered to Cal, stepping back when he didn’t immediately receive a response. “We’ll be right outside, Azi. Come to us when you’re done.”

Cal listened to them go and the sound of the door shutting behind them, sealing him inside the room with the remains of the person who’d raised him.

Whether or not she’d done a good job of that was debatable.

He’d both hated her and convinced himself he cared for her for so long that it was a struggle to grasp his emotions now.

It was a long while that he just stood there, staring into her eyes, taking in how they’d shifted and turned cross-eyed in death, the one on the left bloodshot and cloudy.

He’d never considered killing her, not when he’d been a teenager forced into her bed, and not after.

As an adult in the Academy, he’d put his past behind himself as best he could and tried to move on.

The only things that had lingered were his darker proclivities and kinks.

Sometimes they made him think of her, but more often than not, he’d been able to turn his thoughts to Titus instead.

He gave a sharp, single bark of laughter without realizing.

Ironic that Titus Mercer had been helping him this whole time.

That the man who’d orchestrated Calix’s kidnapping, who’d allowed him to be strung up and sexually tortured—Not just sexually, actually, physically too.

He’d been left dangling from the ceiling with no food, long enough that his arms had lost feeling and his legs had twitched.

In retrospect, Titus had done way worse to him than Sister Grace had ever.

And yet…

Cal took a single step closer to the table, hand lifting as though to touch her face before dropping back to his side.

“I didn’t like when you touched me,” he murmured. “Not once.”

But Titus and Aodhan were different. Titus made him feel . Made him feel like, for the first time in his life, he might not actually be so alone.

Dangerous. Especially considering Cal was aware that much of that feeling was no doubt due to the Connect’s influence over him. His ability to manipulate him, even on a subconscious level.

Aodhan…Aodhan made him feel special. The doctor’s true nature didn’t care about anyone other than himself and Titus. Even though he’d left Cal alone with the director to go off on his killing spree tonight, Cal had still been able to feel the excitement buzzing off him before and after.

He’d felt Aodhan’s hatred toward Sister Grace as well.

It’d been real.

And it’d been for him.

The way Calix saw it, he had two options.

Give in and accept his fate.

Keep resisting and end up under their thumbs—and their bodies—with no autonomy.

If he went with the first, Cal was starting to believe they’d give him back some semblance of freedom. He didn’t know everything about the Connect bond, but he did understand that once they went through with it, they’d be able to find him wherever he went.

But…they’d be able to feel him too.

Cal scratched at the place over his heart, frowning. He hadn’t yet come to terms with his emotions, the thought of letting someone else in to feel them for him was… off-putting.

“Everyone here already thinks I’m a monster.” He leaned closer to Sister Grace. “You’ve helped me realize something tonight. Better a monster than a hypocrite.”

Calix had lied, but he’d never pretended the things that happened were anything other than the horrible acts that they were. He’d convinced the world, and even himself for a while there, that the incident with Nero had been an accident, but he’d never claimed hitting him with his car had been okay.

He knew right from wrong.

He’d never claimed to be a saint.

“What’s your excuse? Looks like you stopped fucking your charges, but never stopped attending shit like this.”

If she came here tonight, that meant she was a member of this exclusive club. Aodhan had even mentioned she’d been with her lover, relishing in the debauchery she used to beat Cal for supposedly being curious about. Neither the doctor or Titus had seemed surprised either, which meant they’d known.

They hadn’t brought him here to poke at old wounds and trick him into a confession to save the sylar.

They’d brought him here for this.

As far as betrothal gifts went…

Calix clutched the top of her head, taking a fistful of her gray and brown hair, barely noticing when some of the blood it was matted with smeared onto his palm and squished between his fingers. He lifted her up until they were at eye level.

“Good Light. May the gods have mercy on that poor girl's soul,” he returned the last thing he’d ever heard her say.

Then he dropped her head with a sickening plop down onto the table, turned, and did the one thing he’d always dreamed of doing.

Calix Valimir finally left his past behind.